The divine right of kings is a political and religious doctrine of political legitimacy of a monarchy, which asserts that a monarch receives the right to rule directly from God and not from the people. The concept of divine right incorporates the ancient Christian concept of "royal God-given rights", which teach that "the right to rule is anointed by God", although this idea is found in many other cultures, including Aryan and Egyptian traditions. In the Middle Ages, the idea that God had granted certain earthly powers to the monarch, just as he had given spiritual authority and power to the church, especially to the Pope, was already a well-known concept long before later writers coined the term "divine right of kings" and employed it as a theory in political science. The bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, one of the principal French theorists of divine right, asserted that the king’s person and authority were sacred; that his power was modeled on that of a father’s and was absolute, deriving from God; and that he was governed by reason (i.e., custom and precedent) . The divine right of kings has been a key element of the self-legitimization of many absolute monarchies, connected with their authority and right to rule.